Seems "young" and "old" here used as a noun. But in this case, is definite article "the" not needed to indicate they are nouns?

Native speaker’s answer
Rebecca
Good job paying attention! You are correct from a grammatical perspective, we should use the article in cases like this, but there are also cases where it is acceptable to drop it. In this specific sentence, the article is dropped to avoid repetition of the word "the" to improve the flow of the sentence. However, it is still grammatically incorrect, and a better way to format the sentence would be as follows: Ex: Games motivate both the young and old to find creative solutions. Dropping an article in cases like that is more acceptable when we have specific the noun in a previous sentence in some way. Ex: The sports teams are entering the arena. Both green and red look ready for a difficult match. (We specified sports teams in the previous sentence, so it is acceptable to drop the article in the following sentence)